Secrets She Kept (32 page)

I covered my ears with my hands, shutting out his anger while his voice rose.

“Orderly! Orderly!” he screamed. “Come! Come now, before I kill them with my bare hands!”

“The orderly is not back yet, Herr Horowitz.” Carl stood between us. “Calm yourself; please calm yourself. Fräulein Sterling meant only to honor you. She could not know what you have endured.”

“
Dummkopf!
The young are always foolish.”

“You may be right. But foolish is not the same as cruel
 
—at least it is not intended.”

The old man’s fury wavered until he sat back, exhausted. Carl crossed the room and fished beneath the radiator for the rings. He held them in his palm, waiting. I pulled my hands from my ears.

Herr Horowitz held out his hand. “Give them to me.” He spoke softly, as a child whispers.

Carl placed them in the old man’s hand and sat beside me, wrapping his arm around me, holding me up. The silence stretched long. I knew we should go. We’d done what we’d come to do. But I could not move.

“I apologize to you, Fräulein. I have never screamed at a young woman before. I do not wish to come to the end of my long life doing so.”

I sat back, swiped away the last of my tears, shaking my head. “It’s all right. It’s nothing.”

“
Nein
. It is something.”

We sat in silence, except for the jerked movement of the wall clock’s minute hand.

“May I ask
 
—” But Carl pressed my fingers, urging me to stop.

“Ask what you will,” Herr Horowitz answered.

I pulled my hand from Carl’s. “How did you get out of the camp alive? Were you there to the end of the war?”

“Till the end of the war. And then
 
—” he shrugged
 
—“there was nowhere to go. All our property had been Aryanized. German Gentiles living in our homes, using our things
 
—those they had not thrown away or sold. So we lived in the camps for months. The same camps we’d been living in as prisoners, we lived in as free men.”

I’d heard that before, but it seemed too cruel to be true.

“They said the food was better and the labor less under our ‘liberators.’ But I wouldn’t know. I lay naked like the dead for three months in a camp hospital ward. So many sick and dying. There were not enough blankets or clothing for all. Many continued wearing the prison rags they’d worn during their internment. Clothing was given to those who would most likely survive, or those able to clamor for it.”

“But you recovered.”

“I did not want to. I wanted only to die.”

“What made you live?”

Tears glazed his eyes. “Meine Schwester. Meine altere Schwester
came looking for me. She knew I’d been sent to Dachau. She never stopped, never gave up.” He swallowed. “I remember her that day, as yesterday. I saw her walk in, a lady in her dress and high-heeled shoes and handbag. She began at one end of the ward and looked into the face of each patient. Sometimes she read the name on the chart at the foot of the bed. No one looked as they had once looked. We were men only in our thirties and forties, but we looked ancient
 
—unrecognizable with our sunken cheeks and hollowed eyes.

“I can still see her standing in the middle of my ward. She called my name, but I did not answer, was too weak yet to answer. She looked just like an angel, a vision that would surely vanish, as all my family had vanished.

“When she found my bed she searched my face. She nearly passed by. It was the first time I had cried since Wilhelm died. I cried and I cried. I could not stop. I’d thought all my family was dead, and here was my angel Schwester.

“She turned and saw me . . . knew me . . . cradled my head against her chest, like a baby, then laid me down. My skin peeled off in her hands, so thin it was. I was ashamed. I knew I must have disgusted her. Never had I allowed myself to be dirty before the camp. Tears poured down her face, but she did not turn away from me.

“And then she did the thing I will never forget, the thing that spoke of her great love for me. She pulled her panties from beneath her dress and gently pulled them up my legs
 
—the first covering I’d had in months. She gave me my dignity again
 
—the first dignity anyone had given me since the day Herr Sommer stole these.” He fingered the rings in his palm.

LIESELOTTE KIRCHMANN

OCTOBER 1944

By the second week we understood the established routine
 
—a routine broken daily, hourly, according to the whim of the guards on duty.

Whistles blew at 4 a.m., followed by a mad dash through flying straw and dust to the center of the room to grab what at least looked the color of ersatz coffee and our morning ration of bread. By 4:30, regardless of the weather
 
—rain or sun or early snow
 
—we slogged to the Lagerstrasse, the wide, open ground before the hospital, to join thousands of other prisoners from other barracks.

We stood at attention in our ten-wide, ten-deep formations for an hour, or it might be four hours. Finally released to our barracks, the whistle might blow again, and we would rush back to the cinder avenue and begin roll call once more
 
—calling out our numbers, over and over again.

Workers inside Ravensbruk lined up for two “meals” per day. The thousands that marched to the local factory, Siemens
 
—a mile and a half from camp
 
—received three. Eleven grueling hours each day we loaded heavy metal plates from railway cars into a handcart, then pushed the handcart to a receiving gate within that factory.

Only the early morning and evening march to and from camp made the work bearable. Looking up, the mile and a half through the forest, beneath the changing autumn leaves framed by a blue sky, reminded us that life went on somewhere
 
—at least in the realm of birds and clouds and scuttling squirrels. Were we not starving and filthy, with torn dresses and broken shoes, it might have been a stroll through Berlin’s Tiergarten
 
—at least that’s what Mutter Kirchmann said each morning. Birsdsong kept me from utter despair. If that one little bird could live
 
—like the sparrow whose life Mutter Kirchmann said was important to the Lord
 
—then, perhaps, so could I. If that one little bird could live and breathe and sing and fly away
 
—perhaps to see my Lukas, wherever he was
 
—then perhaps I, too, might one day see him.

During the march to and from the factory, women whispered to one another
 
—as long as we weren’t caught. Making acquaintance, asking for information about husbands or sons or daughters or news of the war. How close were the Allies? Were the Russians near?

We grilled new recruits for outside information. After the first week I understood that urgency
 
—every bit of news was a slice of heaven from home.

In our second week Mutter Kirchmann met the Dutch Sisters. Forbidden the use of names, we rarely asked, but we knew they were sisters
 
—women Mutter Kirchmann’s age who bunked across the narrow aisle from us in Barricks 28. They were a blessing to her that I could not be. “Very religious,” I called them, and often closed my eyes at night, pretending to rest from my exhaustion, while they sang hymns and read, eyes and voices aflame, from books of a New Testament one of them had smuggled into the barracks.

I rarely joined in. My fledgling faith in the God of my Confessing
Church wavered. How could He allow Ravensbruk? And, if He didn’t, then He was either not God or not there. Perhaps, as some said, He was on leave.

“Lieselotte,” Mutter Kirchmann whispered night after night in my ear. “We musn’t lose faith. We don’t know why things happen, but
 
—”

I am ashamed to say I shut her out. I couldn’t listen. I couldn’t comprehend.

At the end of the second week, as dusk fell during our return from the factory, the guard blocked our entrance to Ravensbruk
 
—just beyond the heavy iron gates. A number was shouted. Weary after our grueling day at Siemens, my brain didn’t register the number. All I could think about was crawling onto our hard wooden bunk.

The woman beside me whispered, “That’s you
 
—that’s you she’s calling!”

The guard shouted the number again. Uncertain, I glanced at Mutter Kirchmann. It was not a good sign, being noticed. I stepped forward from the lines. The Kapo, a prisoner in charge of prisoners
 
—often more cruel than the SS
 
—motioned me to follow her. The columns of workers, including Mutter Kirchmann, marched silently into camp, while I, quickly as possible, followed the Kapo down an alley.

She stopped then came behind me, impatiently pushing me along.
“Schnell!
Do you think I have all night?”

We turned a corner, nearly running into another guard
 
—a man, who slipped her a roll of bills, then pulled me roughly by the arm. I couldn’t see his face, but the very fact that it was a man terrified me. “No,” I whimpered. “Please.”

“Shut up! I’m not going to hurt you
 
—not if you do as I say. Not if you become the meal ticket I’ve wagered.” It was the SS officer who’d goaded me the day Mutter Kirchmann and I were first processed, the one who’d flirted and run his hands and eyes over me with vigor. My heart beat so fast against my ribs it nearly burst its cage.

He pulled me along, then pushed me through the door of a
whitewashed building. The bright lights, the row of sewing machines, the women still bent over their needles surprised me.

“I
 
—I don’t know how to operate a
 
—”

But he wasn’t interested and pushed me through the doorway at the far end of the room. Three other women stood in the center of the narrow room
 
—each looking as frightened as I felt, and each about my size
 
—height and shape and hair color. I glimpsed two men in suits and fedoras standing in the shadows against the back wall. I narrowed my eyes to better see but was immediately shoved to turn the opposite direction.

“Spread your arms!” The order surprised all of us, but we obediently spread our arms.

“Close your eyes and turn around
 
—keep them closed!”

My heart beat all the faster. My mind ran through every scenario I could imagine
 
—none of them good.

I wanted to open my eyes, to glimpse the men observing us, perceive their intention, but was afraid.

“Face the wall! Hands on the wall!”

We obeyed. And then I heard the officer’s heels walk to the back of the room, heard the men murmur, heard the voices become more intense, grow demanding, then falter. Something familiar in the cadence, even though I couldn’t hear the words, made me tilt my head to listen. I lifted my head, certain I recognized a voice
 
—a voice I’d known all my life.

“Vater?” I whispered.

“Keep your eyes closed! Face the wall!” the officer barked, new anger in his voice. Footsteps quickly crossed the room. The door opened, then closed with a decided latch. My heart wouldn’t stop beating. Had Vater come to release me
 
—to free us?

The officer walked behind us, slapping one woman and another on the backside, “You, you, and you
 
—return to your barracks. Now!”

But he hadn’t slapped me. And that made my heart stop. Freedom? For me, and if for me, then surely for Mutter Kirchmann! Vater must have realized what happened, must have come looking for me!

“Not a word.” He grabbed my arm and pushed me forward, opposite from the doorway where the man with the familiar voice had gone.
This can’t be right! The other way! They left the other way!

“Mein Vater,” I whispered hoarsely.

“Apparently not.” He jerked me into a long, dimly lit hallway, blocks of cells on either side.

“But
 
—I heard
 
—”

“What you heard
 
—” he pushed me into a cell and slammed the door behind him
 
—“is a man who claims not to know you, who claims that his daughter is dead.” He pulled his gun. “I expected to be rewarded for my trouble and expense in finding the missing Fräulein Lieselotte Sommer, beloved daughter of the great and rising Party Member. But it doesn’t seem he really wants to find you
 
—and my discovery has only led to my superior’s fury.”

“No. Please, let me talk to him. There is a mistake, a misunderstanding.”

‘“Mistake’
 
—an understatement. Well, I say if Herr Sommer believes his daughter is dead, we have nothing to lose. We might even prove him right.”

“No! No!”

“On the other hand, there are things more profitable to me than your death.” He smiled slowly and holstered his gun. “Yes, more pleasurable and profitable, indeed.”

My heart stopped. My legs barely held me up.

He unbuckled his holster and his belt and tossed them aside.

I cowered to the farthest corner of the cell, but it did no good. I screamed and screamed, but he came on, ripping open my filthy prison dress. And when I continued to scream he slapped me, again and again, hard across the face.

HANNAH STERLING

APRIL 1973

Night had fallen by the time Carl unlocked Grandfather’s kitchen door. He turned the electric switch. I winced in the sudden light as he led me to the table and a straight-back chair.

Carl lit the stove and placed the kettle on the burner. He swirled warm water round the china pot, emptied it, and spooned in tea leaves. He set cups to warm, but did not speak. What words could follow Herr Horowitz’s story?

When the kettle whistled, Carl poured boiling water into the pot and covered it to steep. He sliced bread, slathering it with butter and honey.

“I can’t eat. Please don’t fix me anything.”

“You will eat and you will drink your tea and we will talk this through.”

“There’s nothing to say. I don’t want any part of this; no more.”

“But you said
 
—”

“I know what I said. I know it was my idea to track him down, but I had no idea he would hate me
 
—they would all hate me. It’s as if I called the Gestapo, as if I slammed the door of the camp on them.” I wrapped my arms around myself. “I feel dirty . . . like I can never get clean. As if I shouldn’t have lived, as if my family should not have survived.” The tears I’d pushed down for hours came very near the surface.

“But your mother did survive, and you were born . . . if for no other reason than to tell them you are sorry your grandfather did this. If for no other reason than to listen to their stories and remember, to promise that you will never forget.”

“Remembering doesn’t redeem anything!”

“No. Who are we to redeem anything? We’re not redeemers, after all. We’re not saviors! That’s what Hitler claimed for Germany
 
—and look what he did!”

I covered my face with my hands. If only I could shut out the world, shut out the blinding light.

“Fräulein Sterling?” Geoffrey stood at the door.

It took me a moment to remember who he was or why he was here.
Grandfather.

“I wanted to let you know that Herr Sommer is asking for you.”

“Asking for me?”

“
Ja
, he started to speak yesterday
 
—moans, really. But today he asked for you by name.”

Carl pressed my hand.

“He is sleeping now, but perhaps tomorrow
 
—in the morning?”

I didn’t know what to say.

“Perhaps you can let Fräulein Sterling know in the morning how he’s doing,” Carl suggested quietly.

Geoffrey hesitated. “
Ja,
I will do that.” He turned to go, but stopped and turned again. “There is a man who has come twice to the door,
asking for Herr Sommer. The first time I did not answer
 
—as you instructed. But the second, he beat on the door, demanding.”

“Dr. Peterson?”

“
Ja
, that is his name.”

“You let him in?”

“
Nein.
Your instructions were clear. But I thought you should know I opened the upstairs window and told him to go away. The neighbor across the street had come out onto her walk to watch. I thought she might telephone the Polizei.”

“Thank you, Geoffrey. Thank you for telling me.”

“
Ja
, well,
guten Abend
, then.”

“Guten Abend.”

I pulled my hand from Carl’s. “If he’s able to say my name, that means he’ll regain his speech.”

“He can’t hurt you. You must remember that.”

I leaned my head back. “He’s hurt so many.” I pushed the heels of my palms into my eyes. “I don’t think I can do this.”

“You’ve already met with two survivors, and you’ve set in motion contact with those in the U.S. Your attorney has written them.”

Nausea washed over me. “Ward Beecham can handle that. He doesn’t need me.”

“Then perhaps it is time to do what you came for, to discover what you need to know. If Herr Sommer remembers your name, he most likely remembers where he was and what he was doing when he collapsed. He must realize you’ve put the pieces together. You hold the cards. That gives you leverage.”

“He’s dying. Anything I ask him could bring on
 
—”

“
Ja
, he’s dying, so there may not be much time. How important is the truth to you?”

I considered that. Could I go home knowing only what I knew? I pulled my hands away from my face. “I must know what happened to Mama and what made her the mother I knew.”

“Then ask, Hannah. Before it is too late, ask!”

When I reached Grandfather’s door the next morning, my fledgling confidence wavered. Carl had made it sound so simple the night before. His urgings reminded me of a Scripture I’d learned in Sunday School as a child: “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto to you.”

I needed to ask now, before Grandfather died, or before he regained strength enough to refuse me. I wanted to follow the trail
 
—to seek and find my mother. I wanted to be courageous, to knock on the doors of the past and have them opened to me, to reveal the truth. But what I most wanted was a happy ending to it all
 
—a happy ending I could in no way imagine. And if that ending should not be happy, what then?

It was the memory of those he’d used and abused
 
—those whose lives he’d betrayed and thrown to their deaths
 
—and the need to understand my mother and what happened to her that carried me through that door.

The minute I entered, his eyes found me. I couldn’t keep the heat from my face or disguise my fury.

He blinked, and I knew he knew.

“G-Geoffrey,” he whispered. “L-leave us.” His words were deliberate, with a slight slur, but clear enough.

Geoffrey looked to me for confirmation. I nodded, and he slipped from the room.

“You f-found . . .”

“Everything. The ledger, in all its detail, and your treasure room.”

I couldn’t read his face.
Anger? Defiance? Humiliation? Defeat?

“I want to know about my mother. What happened to her, and who is my father? What did you do to them?”

He closed his eyes.

“You do n-not understand.”

“No, I don’t. So explain to me why you sold human beings to a death machine.”

“We did not kn-know.”

“I don’t believe that. You were a member of the Nazi Party. How could you of all people not know?”

“Beginning
 
—” He shook his head.

“You’re saying that in the beginning, you didn’t know that they would be tortured and starved and killed?”

“We did n-not know.”

“But later
 
—the dates in the ledger kept on until 1944. By then you must have known.”

He didn’t answer.

“There’s no way to justify what you did, no way to reconcile your conniving, your complicity to murder, with human decency.”

He lay in bed, his eyes watching me as if he stood on trial in the middle of a courtroom
 
—like a replay of the Nuremberg trials. I felt powerful in a way I’d never felt, as if I could rake him over the coals and pronounce judgment on his evil heart
 
—judge and jury rolled into one. But even that did not feel clean.
Who am I to judge?
“Why? Why did you do it?”

He turned his head away.

“My mother was part of the Resistance. I know now that you preyed upon people she’d been helping. And she discovered that, didn’t she?”

He didn’t speak for the longest time and it was all I could do not to shake him, to thrash him. At last he whispered, “Jew lovers.”

“What ‘Jew lovers?’ The Confessing Church members? The Kirchmanns?”

“Pretending they we-were n-not.”

“You said Frau Kirchmann nursed Grossmutter in her last illness. She stayed with her day and night while you worked. And Mama loved Lukas Kirchmann
 
—they were engaged. You gave them a party, gave them your blessing. What happened that you sold them out? Why?”

“Jews! She was part Je-Je
 
—”

“You sold your daughter’s fiancé and his family away because they were partly Jewish?”

He closed his eyes, acquiescing.

“Mama must have hated you for that. Is that why she left you
 
—why she ran away? Or did she run away? Was she arrested with them? What happened to Mama? I need to know!” I wanted to shake him.

But Grandfather turned his face to the wall and did not speak.

“She did not run away
 
—not exactly.”

I whipped around to find Dr. Peterson standing in Grandfather’s bedroom door. “What are you doing here?”

“Your good friend Geoffrey stepped out for a cigarette. He failed to lock the door. In any case, you’ve no right to keep me from my client. We have a great deal to discuss, do we not, Wolfgang?”

Grandfather’s eyes widened in vulnerability. I hated Dr. Peterson and his smug, nearly licentious stare, but I would not back down now. “What do you mean she didn’t run away?”

“Ah, Wolfgang, you have not told her?”

Grandfather looked like a squirrel in a steel, sharp-fanged trap.

Dr. Peterson shook his finger at Grandfather, as if scolding a small child. “I warned you not to alter our arrangement, my friend. Bringing Fräulein Sterling into our partnership . . .” He shook his head. “Not a wise plan. Though it does increase our leverage with her.”

He glared at me in a proprietary way. My skin crawled.

“Under the circumstances, I believe it will do her good to know the truth.”

Grandfather attempted to reach out for Dr. Peterson. He nearly fell out of bed, but I caught his arm and helped him back.

“Your mother was quite the advocate for the downtrodden, Fräulein Sterling. But you would learn that on your own, eventually. So I’m not telling anything out of school, am I, Wolfgang?” He smiled unpleasantly. “Unfortunately, her sympathies were misguided by her infatuation
 
—for at that age we can hardly call it love
 
—with the Kirchmann boy. You must not blame your Grossvater, Fräulein. We were all taken in by them.”

Dr. Peterson laid his hat aside and pulled the scarf from this throat. “The Kirchmanns immigrated from Austria, perhaps ten years before the
war. We all believed them Aryans of the finest order. But Frau Kirchmann was the daughter of a Jewess, which meant she was a Michling, a half-breed. I believe I was first to suspect.” He shrugged, “A coincidence that the truth came to light the night of Lukas and Lieselotte’s engagment party. Is that not correct, Wolfgang?”

“You denounced the family at Mama’s engagement party?”

“
Nein, nein
 
—not I, and not then. I simply brought my suspicions to the attention of your Grossvater. He set in motion all the rest.”

“Grandfather?”

“Sh-she b-broke the law.”

“Because she was in love?”

“You musn’t simplify this, Fräulein Sterling,” Peterson interrupted. “Your mother stole food and ration books, dealt shrewdly in the black market
 
—for quite some time. Because she was complicit in forging documents and helping Jews steal funds from the Reich, she deserved detainment, at the very least. It would have been illegal not to report her.”

“My mother stole funds from the Reich?”

“You may know that Jews were allowed to leave the country possessing a certain amount of funds
 
—anything more drained crucial assets belonging to the Reich. Helping them to leave with more than the law allowed was tantamount to stealing. It
was
stealing.”

“Their own money.”

“We simply made sure the Reich received its due
 
—and we didn’t do badly ourselves. Wolfgang and I were quite a team in those days, weren’t we, my friend?”

Grandfather paled.

“You mean you followed my mother and used her kindness to trick people into trusting you.”

Peterson removed his coat. “That is not exactly how I would describe it, but yes, in essence. Your mother . . .” He smiled again, that oily smile. “Quite a pretty girl, young, naive. Her infatuation with Lukas
Kirchmann blinded her. As long as she led us to criminals thwarting the Reich, she was quite useful.”

“You mean as long as you could use her relationships to exploit innocent people.”

“The Jews were not innocent, Fräulein. You speak as if they were human! They were vermin and lawbreakers. Jews brought on the degradation of Germany
 
—our betrayal and loss of the Great War, that hateful, spiteful, humiliating treaty of Versailles! They caused our economic and moral downfall! It is something you Americans cannot grasp. Though I daresay if the shoe were placed on the other foot
 
—if America could rid herself of those races who’ve became a burden on your society, then . . . well, you would see that we are not the only ones with vision. We were simply the only ones with a Führer made of steel.”

His prejudices sickened me. “What happened in 1944 to Mama? What happened that you stopped selling Jews?”

“Selling Jews?” Dr. Peterson winced. “How mercenary you make it sound. It was Wolfgang who stopped the process. Shall I tell her how?”

Grandfather’s breathing labored. “I f-forbade the marriage,” he stuttered. “It was illegal!”

“However, that did not stop her, did it, my friend?”

“They married? Lukas Kirchmann and Mama married?”

“Verbotten! It was f-forbidden!” Grandfather’s eyes flamed.

“But they married anyway; is that what you’re telling me?” It was the missing piece in my puzzle.
Mama didn’t just pretend she was a Kirchmann
 
—she
was
a Kirchmann. Then that may mean . . .

“You must understand, Fräulein, that such a marriage was not only illegal, it was ruinous
 
—to Wolfgang’s reputation, to his status within the Reich, even to his own prospects of marriage at the time.”

The images played through my mind like a film. “You denounced her. You denounced your own daughter?”

“Nein!”
Grandfather barked. “The K-Kirchmanns
 
—not Lieselotte. I never in-in-t-tended . . .” His words grew indecipherable.